I found this article to be very pognant if Hedges has got all his facts right.

I should also apologise if Im wrong in describing the nature of this article as "unusual", where Hedges is concerned, given his ideological leanings. Its just one from left field for me, given most of the other subjects Ive read his writings on.

Anyway, here goes...from truthdig....

Food Behind Bars Isn’t Fit for Your Dog

Posted on Dec 22, 2013

By Chris Hedges

Shares in the Philadelphia-based Aramark Holdings Corp., which contracts through Aramark Correctional Services to provide the food to 600 correctional institutions across the United States, went public Thursday. The corporation, acquired in 2007 for $8.3 billion by investors that included Goldman Sachs, raised $725 million last week from the sale of the stock. It is one more sign that the business of locking up poor people in corporate America is booming.

Aramark, whose website says it provides 1 million meals a day to prisoners, does what corporations are doing throughout the society: It lavishes campaign donations on pliable politicians, who in turn hand out state and federal contracts to political contributors, as well as write laws and regulations to benefit their corporate sponsors at the expense of the poor. Aramark fires unionized workers inside prisons and jails and replaces them with underpaid, nonunionized employees. And it makes sure the food is low enough in both quality and portion to produce huge profits.

Aramark, often contracted to provide food to prisoners at about a dollar a meal, is one of numerous corporations, from phone companies to construction firms, that have found our grotesque system of mass incarceration to be very profitable. The bodies of the poor, when they are not captive, are worth little to corporations. But bodies behind bars can each generate $40,000 to $50,000 a year for corporate coffers. More than 2.2 million men and women are in prisons and jails in the U.S.

Crystal Jordan, who has spent 23 years as a corrections officer in New Jersey and who works at the Burlington County Jail, and another corrections officer at the jail, who did not want to be named, told me that the food doled out to prisoners by Aramark is not only substandard but often spoiled. For nearly a decade Jordan has filed complaints about the conditions in the jail, including persistent mold on walls and elsewhere, with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and state and county officials. The results of her complaints have been negligible.

“The big shift came in 2004 when the state got rid of the employees who worked in the kitchen and gave the food service contract to Aramark,” said Jordan, who has sent several complaints about jail kitchen conditions to state and county authorities. “The food was not great [earlier], but the officers ate it along with the prisoners. Once Aramark came in, that changed. The bread was stale. I saw food in the kitchen with mold on it. The refrigerator broke down and the food was left outside in the cold or trucked in from another facility. Those who ate the food began to get sick. The officers demanded the right to bring in their own food or order out, which the jail authorities granted. But the prisoners had no choice. Diarrhea and vomiting is common among the prisoners. A few weeks ago one of the officers got a bowl of the prisoners’ chili. We all told him not to eat it. He ended up with diarrhea in the bathroom.”

Many of those incarcerated in prisons or jails such as Union County Jail in Elizabeth, N.J., where Aramark runs the food service, echo Jordan’s account. They say that sickness and persistent hunger are becoming a routine part of being incarcerated.

“The food gives everybody in the jail diarrhea,” said James Gibbs, 52, who recently spent two weeks in Union County Jail and previously had spent two years there. “There was never enough food. People were hungry all the time.”

Al Gordon, 45, said he was in Union County Jail when nearly everyone came down with food poisoning from tacos. “It was awful,” he said when we spoke in Elizabeth. “All the prisoners, except the ones who were vegetarian and who did not eat the meat in the tacos, had diarrhea for three days. Whenever we tried to eat anything for those three days we threw it back up. We were all sweating and felt dizzy.”

Gordon had a job in the jail’s kitchen, where he helped prepare the food, usually under the supervision of two Aramark employees. “There were mice running around and mice droppings everywhere,” he said. “The utensils for cooking were dirty. Many of the prisoners preparing the food would use the bathroom and then not wash their hands or wear gloves. Hair fell into the food. The bread was stale and hard. And the portions we were required to serve were real small. You could eat six portions like the ones we served ... and still be hungry. If we put more than the required portion on the tray the Aramark people would make us take it off. It wasn’t civilized. I lost 30 pounds. I would wake up at night and put toothpaste in my mouth to get rid of the hunger urge. The only way a person survived in there was to have money on the books to order from the canteen, but I didn’t have no money. It was especially bad for the diabetics, and there are a lot of diabetics behind bars.”

Today's word in the Smart Criminal Justice Consumer's Neighborhood is "recidivism".Recidivism is a word used by the American Industrial Prison complex to describe how manymen and women return to prison once they are released from the taxpayer funded electronic cesspools called prisons oopsexcuse me I meant correctional institutions. Helps to use the right brand name ,eh?

Recidivism is the word Utah Commissioner of Corrections Rollin Cook uses when he appears before the legislatureto ask for funding. The word is supposed to be an active barometer of the success or failure of Utah Department of Correctionsuse of the Utah taxpayer tax dollar. Of course this word does not tell you how many men and women commit new crimes oncethey are released from "correctional institutions" because these person have to first get caught before they become a recidivist.So if a former inmate commits dozens of crimes before being caught what does that tell you about using the word recidivism?Of course being a smart criminal justice consumer you already knew this.Recidivism does not tell you of the tremendous contamination that takes places in these taxpayer funded electronic cesspoolswhen pedophiles murderers, arsonists, rapists ,armed robbers live with each other 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for years at a time. Yea I know you are going to say "at least they are not sleeping next to anyone from Goldman Sachs and Bank of America.

Think what might happen if these inmates were serving their sentences at the Utah Center for the Research Into Alternative Energy?Where they spent their time alongside physicists,chemists and engineers 24/7 for years at a time.

The current criminal justice system crime family component known as the Department of Corrections is staffed by men and women who are former vets who invaded Iraq for Exxon Mobil and BP managing to kill tens of thousands of women and children and an occasional freedom fighter trying to protect his family from this US invasion of high school drop outs. Over 85% of the men and women working at the Utah DOC are former vets who have the ethics, and morality of serial killing mercenaries.I know some of you will say the reason a lot of people turn to crime is because they cannot find jobs because the economy has tanked because our tax dime goes to funding invasions of middle east and African countries for their vast reserves of oil.But as a smart criminal justice consumer you already knew this, eh?

Over 60% of the men and women released from the Utah Department of Corrections will return to prison,usually within 2 years.Of course Commissioner of Correction Rollin does not tell the Utah Legislature the person is released from prison as a more vicious and competent criminal. I know you are going to tell me it is common practice in Utah to buy a product from a company that has a 60% failure rate. Here is the the Utah DOC crime family brand public relations press release. But as a smart criminal justice consumer you already knew this. see link http://corrections.utah.gov/

CORRECTIONS MISSION

Our dedicated team of professionals ensures public safety by effectively managing offenders while maintaining close collaboration with partner agencies and the community. Our team is devoted to providing maximum opportunities for offenders to make lasting changes through accountability, treatment, education, and positive reinforcement within a safe environment.

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Last edited by fruhmenschen on Wed Dec 25, 2013 7:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.